


An Open Letter to My Mother who Voted for Donald Trump

by PinkGlitterMasturbation



Category: Original Work, Political RPF - US 21st c.
Genre: Angst, Equality, Forgiveness, Hurt/Comfort, LBGT rights, Other, Political thoughts, Resistance, The Personal IS Political!, Trans rights, Trying to make sense of family political divides, Understanding, Women's Rights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 17:17:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8762023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PinkGlitterMasturbation/pseuds/PinkGlitterMasturbation
Summary: I wrote and sent this letter to my mother, who voted for Donald Trump, despite having LBGT daughters and grandchildren. My sister and I were both left heartbroken and feeling betrayed. I decided to share it because I think many people are hurt, scared, and confused.  If any of this letter is helpful to you, take it.  Use it.  Adapt it to your life and circumstances, and send it to family members.  Try to bridge the gap with love.  Help love trump hate.





	

Dear Mom,

  

       You are clearly in distress, which hurts me to see. I love you. I will always love you. I will not deny you my affection or access to your grandchildren. I want you in my life, and in my children’s lives. However, my sister is also in distress, and so am I. _Deeply_. You told my class that you are honest with the women in your group, that you talk bluntly with them, and that they respect you for that honesty. In order for us both to heal, I must explain how I feel, how hurt I am by your actions.

 

       You were the first person I ever loved. I idolized you as a child, and I felt that love reflected back at me. You told me that I could do anything, be anything. You found the strength of will to leave behind the church you were raised in because it preached close-minded beliefs that were harmful to your self-esteem and your children’s self-esteem. When I came to you about my attraction to women, when I brought home Wendy, you defended me to your family. You insisted that Wendy and I be treated equally, and you did the same for my sister and Dana, and you are doing the same now for Alex.   You champion women who have been abused and neglected their entire lives – women in your group, women in AA – you stand up and speak out when they are mistreated.

 

            All these wonderful things you have done, that you do, on a daily basis, makes it all the more impossible to understand how you could vote for a ticket that betrays all the causes you believe in, that betrays both of your daughters, your daughter-in-law, and two of your three grandsons. I know betrayal is a strong word, but I am explaining how I feel, how I know my sister feels. None of us (and here I mean my sister, Dana, Martin, and myself) can reconcile the day-to-day love and strong activism you exhibit in your life with the choice you made. My sister said that she didn’t recognize her mother, and I understand that statement. It almost seems like a split personality.

 

            Think of it, mother. If a woman in your group, or one of your AA sponsees, came to you and said that a man had tweeted about her weight, had publicly shamed her, had bullied her, had called her ugly in public, had grabbed her in a sexual manner against her will – you would be outraged. If that man were local, a police officer or judge or doctor, you would want him punished for such behavior. Yet, Donald Trump has done all of these things, and you voted for him – gave him the power to decide all manner of issues concerning women’s lives – lives that he doesn’t value. I feel betrayed as a woman, unable to understand why the woman who raised me to be a strong woman, to never let a man push me around, the woman who has been abused by more than one man, who sees the effects of domestic violence, who has studied, on a Master’s level, how insidious sexism is in our culture, could possibly betray herself in that way.

 

           But much more concerning is the fact that since the Republican congress held the Supreme Court nomination hostage for a year, this ticket will have control over who the swing vote is in future cases that reach the highest court in our land – cases that will directly impact the future of Dana, Thursday, Escher, and Alex. Pence has already stated that he would support a constitutional amendment to make it legal to discriminate against LGBT people based on religious belief. As a governor, he has a horrible record in the way he treats LGBT people. You voted for a man who believes Thursday and Dana are deviants, that they should not be married, that they should even receive ‘re-education’ therapy to ‘fix’ them. He would love to see their family dismantled, Escher placed in the custody of some lovely, heterosexual, god-fearing family. And Alex? I can’t even imagine what he would want to do to my beautiful baby boy.

 

One of the cases that will be coming to the Supreme Court, and SOON, is bathroom rights for transgender people. The nominee, and likely the deciding vote, will surely be against people like Alex. Imagine Alex at 15-16 years old, on puberty blockers, perhaps taking testosterone shots. He would present physically as a young man. He would be so proud that his outsides matched how he felt inside. Now imagine the law that says he must use the women’s room. Do you know that 90% of transgender people have been assaulted in bathrooms? If Alex would go into the women’s room, he would be seen as a predator, a threat, a peeping Tom. Women would scream at him, call him names, perhaps hit, kick, or mace him, call the police on him. All of these things have happened, and continue to happen to transgender people. What do you think Alex would do to avoid this shame? Would he hold his bladder for unnaturally long times? Develop bladder and urinary tract infections? Would he try and try to hold his bladder until he couldn’t, then drive home, covered in his own urine? How can you look my child in the face when you voted for someone, a whole group of people, who HATE him? When I spoke to Dad, he said that both he and you would lay your lives down for Alex, that you would never let anyone hurt him. And I believe that, 100%, in our day-to-day lives. However, you voted a ticket into office that believes he is less, that he isn’t entitled to the basic human right of being able to use a public restroom. If the Trump-Pence ticket had said they believed people should go back to race segregated restrooms, you would have been outraged. But they won’t allow Alex the right to a public restroom.

 

Mom, you had nothing at stake in this election.   Your life would not have changed in any appreciable way if Clinton had been elected. You would not have ended up with higher taxes, you would not have had a change to your health insurance. But Alex? My sister, Dana, Escher? Their future freedoms were put at risk, not just in the hopefully short-lived four years of this presidency, but for likely fifteen to twenty years, or longer, as this new Supreme Court justice whittles away at their rights in the highest court in the land.

 

You said the other day that my sister’s decision to not talk to you was “stupid.” I don’t think it was stupid. Mom, she feels like you care more about Republican policies that don’t affect you at all than standing up for and championing her rights – and I understand that. I don’t get your decision. I can’t reconcile the way you fight for women, the way you fight for Alex, with your decision. You told me, more than once, that you would cut Grandma Becky and all that side of the family out of your life if they didn’t accept your children or your grandchildren, if they didn’t treat us equally. Don’t you understand that is exactly what my sister has done? She has acted out of fear and anger that your vote, her mother’s vote, rejected her rights as a woman, as a lesbian, as a married lesbian, and as a lesbian mother. She said that you posted something on Facebook about being disappointed in the National Association of Social Workers for their denouncement of Trump. Mom, they denounced Trump and his ticket because all that social work stands for is the opposite of Trump, which brings us back to the utter confusion I feel whenever I think about this.

 

I have cried every day since the election. I’m not sleeping well, I’m terrified for my child’s future, I’ve developed a bacterial infection that my doctor bluntly told me was due to stress, and my last blood pressure measurement was 160/90. I am distraught. I feel on the verge of a nervous breakdown, honestly. None of this is your fault, and I am not blaming you. However, I am sharing so that you know just how seriously this has impacted me and my family.

 

I thought you would want to understand, or try to understand. Maybe understanding is impossible. I don’t understand the way you voted. I don’t understand how you could put immigration policies or healthcare policies in front of the human rights of your daughter and grandchild. I don’t think that is what you think you did. I don’t believe that was your intention. But that is a consequence of your action. There is no denying that Alex’s safety (which as a trans child was always precarious due to the high incidence of violence against trans people, and the extremely high rate of suicide among trans people) is substantially less in a republican dominated, LGBT hostile government.

 

If you want to know why or try to understand why my sister did what she did, that is some insight. I love you. I will always love you – you taught me that. When I told you that I liked girls, when we were sitting on the flowered sofa in the front room, folding socks, when I was fifteen years old, you told me that you loved me, that it didn’t matter. And I’m telling you now, that even though I’m hurt, even though I’m scared, that will never make me love you less. I just needed to open this dialogue because all these thoughts and feelings have been bottled up inside of me, making me sick, and I didn’t want to have this conversation face to face because I was afraid you would think I was attacking you, but I’m not. Lack of understanding your motives and thoughts will never make me hate you, because I don’t believe for an instant that you had hate in your heart. I know you love me, and that you love Alex.

 

I do want you to know, though, that I will be protesting Trump’s inauguration, and I am taking Dante with me to Washington, D.C., in January to be part of the Million Woman March that will be protesting. I will be working in any way I can to protect my rights as a woman, and my sister and son’s rights as LGBT people. I don’t want politics to come between us, so maybe we can make Christmas a no-politics zone? Maybe we can just watch silly movies and eat good food and be a family who loves each other unconditionally, even if they don’t understand each other. You say that ‘strong women can survive anything,’ so I must have faith that our family can survive this, and I will work to make sure that it does. My love for you isn’t dependent upon understanding your voting actions. It simply is, because love trumps hate.


End file.
